1. Technical Field
The inventions relate to optical switches, methods of making optical switches and/or methods of using optical switches.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Herein, a 1×K optical wavelength-selective switch (OWSS) is a 1×K optical switch that can independently route individual wavelength channels between the optical input and the K optical outputs of the optical switch. OWSSes are fundamental building blocks that may be used in reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers and optical cross-connects.
Some OWSSes use liquid-crystal-on silicon (LCOS) or micro-electromechanical (MEMS) spatial light modulators as free-space optical technologies. Some such OWSSes may be gridless. Herein, an optical device, e.g., an OWSS, is a gridless optical device if the device has an adjustable wavelength-channel spacing and an adjustable bandwidth that enables use of the device in optical systems with different wavelength-channel spacings and wavelength channel bandwidths. One example of a gridless optical device is an optical device that is useable in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems in which the center-to-center spacing of optical channels is 100 giga-hertz or 50 giga-hertz.